In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
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Opinion
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Opinion
Campaign Finance Goes to Court
Some things never change. Liberals and good-government types were cheering last year when President Bush signed into law the heralded McCain-Feingold Bill, meant to limit the flow of big money into political campaigns. The cheers were premature. Last week, when a three-judge panel in Washington struck down several of the law’s key provisions, many of…
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Opinion Is Joe Bad for Jews? No, But Timidity Is
The American Jewish community may be the most politically sophisticated ethnic or religious group in America. After all, Jews — who make up only 2% of the American populace — are highly over-represented as voters, as contributors, as elected officials on the federal level, as appointees to high government office, as campaign contributors, as political…
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Opinion The Wonder That Is Israel
Israel’s 55th birthday this week is a time to step back, if just for a moment, from the whirlwind of daily events — terrorist attacks against Israelis, road map prognostications, internal Palestinian maneuvering, Labor Party changes in Israel — and reflect on the larger picture. The story of Israel these last 55 years, above all,…
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Letters May 2, 2003
Understanding of Poles Includes Remembering I was surprised to read opinion writer Wladyslaw Bartoszewski calling for a new understanding between Jews and Poles (“On Warsaw Ghetto Anniversary, A Pole Calls for Understanding,” April 18). My mother told me she hid in a neighbor’s cellar with her family during the pogroms in Poland. She was a…
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Opinion The Globalization of Antisemitism
Antisemitism is evolving. After a period of remission owing to the horror of the Holocaust, the ancient prejudice has recently been reactivated, catalyzed by the Arab-Israeli conflict. It has entered a new era in which its main focus has shifted from the domestic to the international. Always protean in quality, always changing to take on…
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Opinion Newt Gingrich’s ‘Road Map’
What can account for former House speaker Newt Gingrich’s recent assault on the State Department? Gingrich, just eight years ago Time magazine’s “Man of the Year,” is these days largely reduced to self-promotion — check his Web site at newt.org. He’s currently a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington, and it…
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Opinion The Honey and the Sting
There’s a background music to Jewish life, if you listen for it. It’s a ubiquitous melodic phrase that’s heard at weddings in Haifa and bar mitzvahs in Houston. It’s played to phone callers put on hold by synagogues and office suites in Toronto and Tel Aviv. The precise tune changes from decade to decade, sometimes…
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Opinion Sanctimonium Santorum
Playing the “gotcha” game is a dangerous political pastime. At best it puts public servants on the defensive, forcing them to measure every word and speak in pablum, impoverishing and degrading the public discourse. At worst an individual’s words can be misquoted or taken out of context, subjecting them to undeserved attacks. That apparently is…
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Opinion Buy the Settlers Out
The Palestinians insist that any final settlement to their conflict with Israel must include the establishment of a state in all of the West Bank and Gaza. The current government of Israel, for its part, has shown its reluctance to evacuate any of the estimated 140 settlements. How, then, to reach a settlement on the…
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Opinion Scripting the Scriptures
Jewish officialdom — that small, cozy world of community leaders and other machers — is already getting agitated by Mel Gibson’s still-in-production Jesus movie. “The Passion” depicts the last 12 hours in the life of Christianity’s founder, and press reports suggest that it places blame for the man’s death firmly on Jewish shoulders. By making…
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Opinion An Unholy Alliance
Enough, already. This dalliance with right-wing Christian groups has passed from the disagreeable fringe into the absurd and even ominous center. It is not at all clear who is using whom, but it is an unnatural and distinctly unholy alliance, one that will surely leave us weaker rather than stronger. There was a time when…
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